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On January 26, 2009, I had the privilege to meet personally Dr. Albert Harrison, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of California, Davis.

Professor Harrison was one of the participants in the meeting convened by the Royal Society on January 25-26 2010 under the title “The detection of exra-terrestrial life and the consequences for science and society”.

Now we are able to know the paper he presented in that meeting, that he titled: “Fear, pandemonium, equanimity and delight: human responses to extra-terrestrial life”

Here is the Abstract and the final part of it where he deals with two issues:Program management strategies, and Are we prepared?

Fear, pandemonium, equanimity and delight: human responses to extra-terrestrial life

Dr.Albert Harrison, Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis

Abstract

How will people respond to the discovery of extra-terrestrial life? Potentially useful resources for addressing this question include historical prototypes, disaster studies and survey research. Reactions will depend on the interplay of the characteristics of the newly found life, the unfolding of the discovery, the context and content of the message and human information processing as shaped by biology, culture and psychology. Pre-existing images of extra-terrestrials as god-like, demonic, or artificial will influence first impressions that may prove highly resistant to change. Most probably people will develop comprehensive images based on minimal information and assess extra-terrestrials in the same ways that they assess one another. Although it is easy to develop frightening scenarios, finding microbial life in our Solar System or intercepting a microwave transmission from many light years away are less likely to be met with adverse reactions such as fear and pandemonium than with positive reactions such as equanimity and delight.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5. Contact management strategies

Policy development and advocacy, science education and information control are among the strategies proposed for guiding humanity through the search process and its aftermath. Over the years, SETI committees of the International Academy of Astronautics, along with other groups, have developed policies intended to prevent false alarms (by insisting on careful verification) and to release information to benefit all humankind. Logsdon & Anderson [40, p. 89] hoped to frame the initial announcement in such a way as ‘to minimize confusion, anxiety, fear, and perceptions of threat among the general population’. They sought precedents in strategies for announcing earthquakes, nuclear accidents and other disasters. They found that actual announcements (as in the case of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown) tended to fall short from the ideal.

Other policy efforts have called for widespread consultation before sending a reply from Earth, and recent debate has focused on active SETI or METI (messaging extra-terrestrial intelligence). Discussions are useful for airing issues, but lack the force of law. New policy will not go far in the absence of endorsement by legislative groups and support from enforcement agencies. Apart from the problem of contamination from an exobiological specimen brought to Earth there is little in the way of identifiable policy that directly applies to non-SETI detection scenarios.

We might expect that a scientifically literate public that understands SETI and is resistant to rumours, pseudoscience and alternative history will be better prepared for the discovery than a poorly informed and gullible public. As Carol Oliver [18] points out, from its inception, SETI has maintained strong programmes of education and outreach. The SETI Institute takes a multi-pronged approach including a website, publications, teacher education materials and public appearances in person and in the media. NASA Ames Research Center is among the organizations that sponsors education and outreach efforts in the broader field of astrobiology. SETI@Home captured public interest and informed thousands of people who volunteered their home computers to help analyse mounds of raw data.

Oliver notes that the public learns about science from many different sources: the mass media, to be sure, but also from textbooks and college courses, art, literature, music, co-workers, family and friends and the Internet. Long ago communications experts shifted from targeting ‘the audience’ to targeting multiple audiences, each with its characteristic belief systems, motives, and level of attentiveness. Thus, different strategies or campaigns are needed to inform different audiences and this rests on sensitivity to demographic and cultural differences.

Almost 50 years ago the Committee on Science and Astronautics [2] assumed that the government would restrict the information made available to the public. Now, in our era of cell phones and e-mails it will be difficult to maintain secrecy. The SETI protocols describe the search as ‘open’ but require waiting for verification before announcing the discovery to the public. In an accidental test of this protocol, a news story of an unconfirmed detection ‘leaked’ to the New York Times before the verification procedure demonstrated that the call was not from extra-terrestrials [19]. Even if they choose candour and full disclosure governmental spokespersons will have difficulties convincing the public that they are being told the truth. The NIDS poll mentioned earlier found that 48 per cent of the respondents believed that following the discovery of ETI government would classify the information and not allow it to be released to the public and 23 per cent believed that government would classify all aspects and move to suppress civilian sources from obtaining or disseminating information about the discovery. Suspiciousness was higher among the respondents identified as ‘influential’ with 51 and 29 per cent endorsing one of the two cover-up options. Citizens’ lack of trust in their own government has reached crisis proportions and is one of the great challenges for political leaders today [41].

6. Are we prepared?

Times have changed dramatically since the 1961 US Congress was warned of adverse reactions to the discovery of ETL. The report that they received could not anticipate microwave searches scanning millions of channels at once, optical SETI, planet imaging, searches for chemical evidence of extrasolar biological or industrial activity or small smart spaceships. Who among the public in 1961 could conceive of home computers, the Internet, twitter or iPods? The discovery of ETI may be far less startling for generations that have been brought up with word processors, electronic calculators, avatars and cell phones as compared with earlier generations used to typewriters, slide rules, pay phones and rag dolls.

Almost all of the research conducted so far was based in North America, Europe, and the UK, so it is extremely difficult to gauge global response. Still, the patchwork findings that are currently available suggest that half of the people surveyed believe that ETI exists and a substantial proportion are convinced that alien spacecraft and astronauts have already visited Earth. Less abundant evidence suggests that people expect a millennial rather than catastrophic event, and feel prepared for the discovery. Society has been unfazed by batmen on the Moon, the canals of Mars, discoveries of quasars and pulsars, claims that a fossil arrived from Mars, and bogus announcements of SETI detections. Any discovery of ETI is likely to produce a mix of emotions including fear, pandemonium, equanimity and delight but in North America and Europe neither the retrieval of an exobiological specimen nor detection of a dial tone at a distance are likely to lead to widespread psychological disintegration and social collapse. Perhaps we should not worry too much about people who protect their belief systems by denying scientific findings (or recasting them as theory), and it seems unlikely that a ‘dial tone at a distance’ will shock people who are embroiled in civil war, caught up in genocide, or wracked by AIDS and starvation. People conditioned by years of participation in UFO clubs, science fiction and an endless parade of purported documentaries may find the discovery anti-climactic.

Of course, this expectation is based on searches that are currently under way. Typically there is a temporal gap or lag between a discovery or invention and cultural adaptation to it. In discussions of the human response to ETL the imbalance seems to be in the opposite direction. Discussions of cultural adaptations are outrunning present-day science.

Faster than light travel, quantum communication, interstellar Rosetta stones and other possible developments that may or may not become available do much to enliven discussions. Piled on one after another in endless combinations these ideas make it difficult to stay focused on what present day searches can yield. In truth, we do not know if and when ETL will be revealed, so we need to be open to many different possibilities. But planning for discoveries that are the most compatible with present day science—an exobiological specimen, a dial tone at a distance—should be the most useful place to start.

The following article only represents the personal viewpoint of the author.

When “flying saucers” –or what the surprised observers thought they were— began to be seen over the territory of the United States of America, the first responders to those news were not the official authorities, but the private initiative, like the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), followed by the National Investigation Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP).

Decades later, it was known that while APRO was an initiative of Jim and Coral Lorenzen espouses, NICAP was an instrument of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Due to the fact of the Cold War and the fear of an atomic attack and/or espionage from the air, as a real matter of defense, the just created United States Air Force (USAF) found reasonable to start a very modest activity in order to know if someone could have really seen the presence of the enemy, or if there were just common mis-identifications of natural phenomena or man-made devices.

That modest activity that really tried to save the face of the USAF confronted to people who made the most incredible claims, knew different stages of activity and different names. It started by being “Project Sign”, then “Grudge” and finally “Blue-Book”, the most known of the three because it had the very active Captain Edward J. Ruppelt commanding it.

It was Capt. Ruppelt who created the acronym UFO, meaning Unidentified Flying Object, and pronounced as “you foe”. The overtone of this pronunciation is very suggestive.

But the USAF never came to a definite conclusion about the UFO subject because there were deliberate efforts to avoid plans of detection and alarm that could have been useful to determine –maybe—once and for all, what those objects were.

Finally, to the USAF the whole UFO subject was an embarrassment, and the military tried to get rid of it in the best possible way.

That was the basis for the so-called “Scientific Study on Unidentified Flying Objects” done by a team of scientists leaded by physicist Prof. Edward U. Condon of the Colorado University.

The “study” was a real mess. Discredited by the E.T. fans, and by serious investigators, it helped anyway the USAF to take the decision to put an end to its official investigation.

Since then –1969— the USAF never returned to investigate UFOs. Its repeated statement that UFOs “do not pose a threat to national security” has been the main reason to close their activity.

From the viewpoint of defense, the USAF had nothing else to do. Period.

This is, after all, a pioneer attitude from the military in relation to the UFO subject, an attitude that should be taken as an example to follow by the military of other countries.

When the Mexican Air Force was confronted with a possible UFO case that involved directly people of its own personnel, nevertheless it didn’t do anything to investigate, analyze or study the UFO subject.

The Mexican Air Force was right to consider that this was not a matter of its concern, and thought to pass the case to a civilian person. But it chose the wrong person: Mr. Jaime Maussán. Certainly he is probably the most publicly known person related with the UFO subject in his country, due to his public conferences, and TV programs, but not the right one.

And this mistake is also a lesson to learn for other Air Forces: choose the right people for the work that has to be done. Choose people with the best background of experience and expertise in investigating and study UFO reports. Choose people who along the years have demonstrated a sober attitude, who apply the scientific method and who do not exploit commercially the UFO subject.

Choose people with enough common sense and criteria. People who will never mix with charlatans, swindlers, and/or cultist groups. People that also have international prestige based on their work of years in the issue. In other words, people you can really trust.

That is the main lesson the Air Forces (and particularly those in Latin America) have to learn from the Mexican event.

The intelligence authorities of the United Kingdom Royal Air Force have definitely established that from the defense viewpoint UFOs are not a matter of concern.

After decades of secretly investigating and studying UFOs, those authorities concluded that there was no need to be doing so any more, because UFOs do not pose a danger for the national security and should not be of concern to the military authorities.

The British authorities established clearly that UFOs are not a matter of defense, therefore it is out of the military scope.

And the most important thing that those authorities did was to publish in a Web site, all the documents that for decades were secret. They made all those documents available to the general public.

France took a different official approach since the Seventies.

Traditionally in France, it was the Gendarmerie (the police) who dealt with UFO reports, as it happens naturally in many other countries, just because it is easier for a person to go to the nearest police station to report what happened.

But of course it is not the task of the police to investigate the UFO subject per se, and the only thing that the police could do –beyond verify certain data given by the person who made a report— is to accumulate chronologically those reports, and that is all.

Therefore in France they relied on scientists to deal with UFOs, because they correctly understood that it is above all a scientific matter and not a military one.

And France gave relevance to the study when put it in the hands of the CNES, the National Center for Space Studies and within the CNES created a panel under the original name of GEPAN, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Study Group, later named GEIPAN, because they added the activity of Information.

Along the years, the French group has provided to its country and all the UFO investigators throughout the world with very important studies dealing with physics and psychology that have been published.

Finally, in 2007, GEIPAN decided to put on the Internet all the cases that it had in its files, because there is no scientific reason to keep them out of the public. Nothing extraordinary came out from those files, but they are there for anyone who wants to read them.

When in 1979, the Uruguayan Air Force created the CRIDOVNI –Commission for the Reception and Investigation of UFO Reports, it followed the pattern taken by the U.S.A. during the Cold War, which could be reasonable at that time.

But after 1989, when the Cold War was over, UFOs shouldn’t be any longer a matter of concern to the Uruguayan Air Force, who should have been open to the initiative proposed by CIOVI (the pioneer and experienced private Center that since 1958 had been investigating and studying UFO cases) in 1985, to create a national institution dedicated to the subject.

That institution would have given priority to scientists and technicians, to the universities, creating the real environment where the UFO subject has to be dealt with. Of course the Uruguayan Air Force would be part of the national institution as well as the Army, the Navy and the police.

The proposal circulated among all the Ministries in Uruguay. All of them were ready to participate, but when it came to the Defense Ministry, the initiative was dismissed under the pretext that it will duplicate the efforts already done by the Air Force, a total fallacy. But it worked, and the project was finally declined.

The Uruguayan Air Force make the big mistake not to rely on CIOVI --that was the organization that have been working for 21 years with the Force--, but in another couple of private institutions that never made a signifying work dealing with the UFO subject.

It was a tricky beginning. After the official Commission was created, CIOVI was called to be a part of it.

After a meeting with then the President of the Commission, Colonel Eduardo Aguirre, CIOVI agreed to participate, but –on a remarkable difference with the other institutions called initially to be part of the Commission-- CIOVI continued being an independent private institution. The relationship with the Commission was therefore an institutional one.

The first press conference given by the brand new Commission was made on the basis of cases studied and closed by CIOVI.

CIOVI tried to provide the Commission with all its experience in the field investigation and the study of cases and brought to the Commission an evaluation system for the classification of the cases studied, which was declined in favor of an incoherent and unreasonable system that pleased to those who wanted to keep the myth of the extraterrestrial and the strange at any cost.

Finally the work with those people became practically impossible and CIOVI left formally the Commission with a letter of resignation.

This does not mean in any way that CIOVI was not ready to cooperate with the Commission if it was called to do so, and, and as a matter of fact it did.

When CIOVI decided to put an end to its activities in 2008, after 50 years of uninterrupted work, it received letters of recognition and commendation from the Commander in Chief of the Uruguayan Air Force and from the president of the CRIDOVNI.

In a meeting with the President of CRIDOVNI, the people that belonged to CIOVI let him know that they were ready to cooperate.

A recent international congress convened by people who belong to the Commission was really regrettable. There is no reason whatsoever to put together people who represents officially the host country with people that belongs to cultists groups as Rahma, or people who forgets the “U” in UFO, and only think that they are dealing with extraterrestrial devices.

This is not the correct environment to characterize the UFO problem, and this is clearly at odds with a scientific approach to the subject.

Now, following the way of doing the things in the old times of the Cold War, the Argentinean Air Force announced recently that would create an official commission. The worst thing that this commission could to is to take the Uruguayan one as an example to follow. We hope that wouldn’t be the case.

We hope that the Argentinean UAPSG members will do all that it is in their capability to avoid another mistake.

And we hope that the Argentinean Air Force could understand that UFOs are no longer a matter of defense, but a question for scientists and technicians to solve. In that sense we consider very auspicious that the AAF has publicly announced that it will rely on scientists and technicians.

Therefore, if there is a reason to have an official UFO activity, it is on the basis that it has to be in the hands of scientists, technicians, and well-credited experts in the subject.

An official institution benefits of all the resources it could have and the requests of information, transportation, analysis, etc. that could do. In that sense, its existence heightens the quality and possibilities of the work to be done.